Those with color deficiency can benefit from a specially tinted soft contact lens that helps them perceive colors more accurately.
Color deficiency is a hereditary defect that some people have at birth - it has been estimated that almost 10% of the male population and about 0.5% of the female population have some color defective problem. Color deficiency does not get better or worse with age. Dr. Jay Schlanger, an optometrist at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, has pioneered the use of a tinted soft contact lens to help the color deficient person to perceive colors more accurately.
(Golden, Colo.) - "Our company supplies specially tinted soft contact lenses
to Dr. Jay Schlanger in Los Angeles, as well as other practitioners throughout
the country, to help patients with color deficiency," Stan Harper, CEO of
Adventures in Color Technology, Ltd., says.
According to Dr. Schlanger,
there are three color deficiencies: blue, green and red.
"Rarely are
patients blue deficient - they're either green or you're red color deficient.
Now what the therapeutic contact lens - usually magenta in color and placed on
one eye - does is that it allows the person to perceive more differences in
color. You notice, I didn't say cure the vision or makes them to see colors
better. They just see more differences.
"For example, if someone is red
deficient and they look at a tree - dark green leaves, dark brown bark - what's
the difference? The amount of red. So the red deficient person might have a hard
time seeing the differences. With the tinted lens on, they'll say 'ah, there's
something different between the two.' Will they say 'that's green and that's
brown?' Not necessarily. But now they can see there's a difference. When they
get dressed, they can look and say 'that tie doesn't match,'" Dr. Schlanger
explains.
New York City optician Cary Hirshfield says the optometry group
he's affiliated with, Farkas Kassalow & Resnick, has been working with
Adventures in Color Technolgy for about 12 years now.
"The therapeutic
application we've used from Adventures in Color Technology is for red/green
color deficiency. That's where we take a custom tinted lens with about a 5 mm
red dot and put it on the non-dominant eye. It usually gets the patient through
whatever test they have to pass for civil service or whatever the case may
be.
"Adventures in Color Technology is miles ahead in the industry - in
terms of customer service, accessibility and the staff's willingness to help
practitioners with their patients' problems. In most cases, their delivery time
is also better," Hirschfield explains.
"The other good thing about
Adventures in Color," Dr. Schlanger adds, "Is that they customize the diameter
of the tinted area on the contact lens. Let's say it's an orange or a magenta
tint, they can make it very close to the exact size of the patient's pupil.
That's very important with the magenta lenses we use for color
vision."
"More than 20 million people suffer
from serious untreated vision problems, and most of those people don't realize a
solution like ours is available," says Stan Harper, CEO of Adventures in Color
Technology and former president of the Contact Lens Society of
America.
Adventures In Color Technology, Ltd., serves eye care
practitioners in private practice throughout the world, developing colors and
patterns for patients and continuing research for other retinal problems.
Hopefully, to soon help patients with macular degeneration, a debilitating loss
of vision as the macula in the back of the eye becomes less and less responsive
to light entering the eye through the pupil. This condition is the leading cause
of blindness in our older population.
The company's headquarters is
located at 1511 Washington Avenue, Golden, Colo., 80401. Harper may be reached
at 303-271-9644, toll-free at 1-800-537-2845 or by e-mail at e-mail protected
from spam bots. The company website is http://www.techcolors.com.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/1/prweb54606.htm